


a love i seemed to lose

by gabolange



Category: The Doctor Blake Mysteries
Genre: Episode Related, F/M, Future Fic, Light Angst, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 06:41:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20238412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabolange/pseuds/gabolange
Summary: Lucien comes home.





	a love i seemed to lose

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to the prompt, "things you said when you thought I was asleep." Set sometime after "Ghost Stories."
> 
> No beta, any errors are my own.

**

Lucien hears the sheets rustle beside him as Jean climbs into bed. She had been fussy tonight, running her hands over everything as if dusting the tea set or folding the napkins might settle her mind. She had sent him to bed hours before with a brittle, “I’ll be up later.”

And now she is, and he hears her sigh. She smooths the bedsheets over her thighs and then crumples them in her fists. “This isn’t how it was supposed to be,” she says. He doesn’t know to whom–she thinks he is asleep, knows it, or would not be sharing such intimate feeling. Has she returned to God in the year he was gone? Is cursing the darkness a habit she picked up in these last long months?

If she has, he understands.

He understands both her need to shout into the void and the words she shares. Since he has been back, things have been fragile between them, not right. There was the relieved reunion, the way they clung to each other so hard neither could breathe, the tears that clouded both their eyes. He could only think, _Jean_, and _I’m home_, and _thank goodness_, and _finally_. She whispered the same things into his shoulder.

And then they tried to get back to their lives and found themselves stepping cautiously around each other as if they were strangers again. Except unlike those early, uneasy days, when they would spar and bicker, now Jean’s silence stretches across every room, tense like a rubber band about to snap.

“No,” he says, and she jumps. 

“Lucien,” she says sharply, and something about her tone makes him smile. She sounds more like herself in this minute than she has in the six weeks he has been home. He looks her over: she wears her hair looser now than years past, and despite the discomfort between them she has put on one of the nightgowns he bought her in Paris. She is beautiful, and startled.

He doesn’t mean to, but he laughs, and as she frowns, he reaches out a hand to cup her face. “There you are,” he says, and she leans into his touch and purses her lips. “You’ve been so quiet,” he says, stroking his thumb across her cheek. “What is it?”

Jean takes a deep breath and focuses somewhere in the middle distance. “Nothing seemed right,” she says. “You–you wanted everything to be like it was, but it can’t be.”

He wants to protest, but he tries to see what she means: his protests at her departures for Council meetings, his horror that she had let the studio turn back into dust and memory. Every little change had felt like an affront and he had said so–_you’re leaving?_ and _you’re no better than my father_. He cringes now to think of it, the way she had recoiled but said nothing in her own defense.

“No,” he says, and turns her face to look at him. “You’re right.” He puts his free hand over hers on the covers, winding their fingers together. “I wanted nothing more than to come home to you,” Lucien says. He remembers how much it hurt to be apart from her–and yet, this odd estrangement might be worse. “But I’ve made a right mess of it.”

She shrugs. “I shouldn’t have–.”

Lucien doesn’t know what she is going to say next, but cuts off whatever it might be. “No,” he says. “You did whatever you needed to do. You lived your life, Jean.” She doesn’t respond, and he takes a breath. “Tell me,” he says. “You always used to tell me when I was ruining things.”

She sniffs. “I just–,” she starts and stops and shrugs. “I didn’t want to upset you. After everything.” Everything: all the things he hasn’t told her about the last year. There is so much, and so little, to tell.

“Please,” he says, and they are both surprised by the fervor in his voice. “Tell me what you need,” he says, as if that has ever been easy between them. “And give me hell if I’m making you mad.” Lucien shifts in the bed so he can pull her against him, resting her head under his chin. 

Jean nods, and the strands of her hair tickle his chin. 

“I will,” she says, and it is not everything, but it is a start.

**


End file.
